Good find, thanks for sharing. Not only a bit surprising, but actually very encouraging. To me, this indicates how serious Marriott is about maintaining the SPG customer for at least a few years.

Hopefully there will not be any data in the system that differentiates a previous Marriott customer vs. a prior Starwood customer (who, being appropriately courted, clearly has the better loyalty treatment with Marriott). We have the better footprint of geographic coverage (and rates, so far). Wouldn't it be a grand ol' planet if we maintained Marriott pricing (aggressive as it can be sometimes in dynamic pricing, it remains below Starwood's base) and received Starwood treatment and exotic locales?

Big Thom knows his stuff as well and has the chops for cutting edge initiatives. It remains a terrific job, so I'm hoping he sticks around.

I've enjoyed (why, because I'm crazy free waffle for those who know this guy) reading all the articles about David Fleuck (high school firetruck jokes not included - free drink for that one; see, I told you, I'm crazy ).

Anyway, as I was saying, reading all the articles about the Marriott Loyalty program lead me to this one

in that article is the following exchange (last quote about software, specifically);

Thom Kozik relayed an interesting story from right after the merger was announced. Again, paraphrasing, he tells the story of Bill Marriott walking into a meeting and saying something along the lines of, “SPG offers these suite awards to all of their top-level elite members. Why don’t we?”

Thom says they want to offer this benefit. It’s been on their road map for a while and they have a strong desire for a better solution here. I asked a follow-up about whether Marriott franchise agreements might present an impediment in requiring individual properties to serve up suite inventory to elite members. Marriott doesn’t consistently offer a suite upgrade benefit to elite members now, so I thought this was a legitimate possibility. He doesn’t believe that’s their issue, rather saying that technology is the most immediate hurdle. He summed it up nicely, “Software doesn’t write itself.”

As I've written before, Thom intimated in Houston (about as strongly as an corp exec could) his frustrations with implementing loyalty frequently being sidetracked if not outright delayed by I.T. snags. We've all read (we've been forced to) about MegaBonus not being offered (a good post yesterday asked the obvious question - why can't Marriott just have everyone receive the offer), along with a host of other point tracking snafus.

Just yesterday in checking my account I saw the following;

No account activity posted for the past 30 days. If your last stay was 10 or more days ago and we missed it, please let us know. The date of your last qualifying activity was 02/09/17.

If we lose Big Thom, who is a digital media entrepreneur with innovative ideas, who could team with Fleuck and really get this program popping, it won't be due to being #2 guy, it will be due to the ongoing logjam thrown at him by the infamous I.T. function (I won't call it a team, it's been outsourced).

Also, interesting reading about agbcpa's Marriott Memorable Experience, being a bit flat. After watching an hour of SPG 'Moments' testimonials, even allowing for it being a marketing piece, there currently seems to be little comparison. Davey boy certainly has his work cut out for him, here's what many SPGers, from the Starwood FlyerTalk forum (hey normanp, I thought you said this was closing 2/28? - it's alive and well, get back on there and tell them what great folks your new pals at Insiders are ) feel about his appointment (and I must say, I'm beginning to see their point);

This is one bit of good news for SPG fans who are very concerned that un-innovative, cookie-cutter and boring Marriott's way of doing things would prevail. David does come from the revenue side, but he also knows how people can be passionate with their loyalty if enticed to do so. I'm still skeptical about 2018, but this is one bit of good news.

I considered making a visit to Boston (love me some Sam Adams). Me, being a Marriott loving, cookie cutting, bore who also factors in price and can go whenever I please, would prefer to go when it $250 a night instead of $350.

Here's my question;

Has anyone figured out how to use flexible dates pricing on the Starwood site?. I have talked to three SPG reps (I love the "we'll call you" function - and they call right away) but none of them know where it is. I stumbled onto it once, but; A) can't find it again and B) it didn't lay it out in any meaningful fashion (at least one that I could figure out). Want I want to do of course is look at prices at a property from April 1 on (just like we do in the Marriott site). Thanking you in advance

erc that pizza in motion article was great had not seen that. I am happy to hear that suite night awards are on the Marriott radar. IT problems are a common complaint, and a real reason why things take time (I work in IT so I have some idea of the struggles). If it’s on the radar and they use the template provided by Starwood I think this IT issue should be a reasonably solvable problem. If it’s really on Bill's radar (and I believe it could be) the problem will be solved. Thanks for an interesting read; based on these recent events I’m hopeful that taking the best parts of both loyalty programs to create a single loyalty program that works for all is a real goal, and not just marketing talk.

Superb, thanks supertweeter! This is what I bumbled, stumbled my way onto before and exactly as you say, you must manually enter each different date for rates (which is of course the same as just entering different rates on the original request). Well, chalk one up for Marriott and thank you for the quick, informative response.

This once again proves how great this forum could be if we didn't have mods chasing down 100 individual snafus courtesy of the IT department

erc Its not the Flyertalk SPG forum that closed (not even Marriott have that much power - I Hope!!). It was SPG's own Advisory Panel (approx 300 invited members) which closed its portal on C-Space on the 28th Feb. . We were advised that we could apply here and for the most part those from outside the US of A seemed to be successful, American's were largely rejected (I suspect that this is because of the existing membership profile rather than anything more sinister . A pity as they lost a lot of expertise, including 1000 stay plus veterans.

Hey erc. I have tried dozens of times to use the "flexible pricing" option on the Starwood site. As far as I can see, it doesn't lay it out as nicely as the Marriott site where you can see an entire month's daily rates at a glance. Instead, it takes you back to a calendar where you have to select specific check in and checkout dates which is very time consuming. I've tried to trick the system by indicating a two week stay in order to see the daily rates, but that doesn't work either. All you get doing it that way is the average daily rate during the entire stay. Maybe one of our new crossover insider members from Starwood can shed some light on this. It is very frustrating!

I'm with all y'all on the SGP flexible dates junk, what a pain the backside to make reservations on that site and after making one yesterday I needed a Bourbon. Hmmm maybe I'll make another today just so I'll require another

I think one problem many merging companies have is not to have all the senior executive team to be from the acquirer . This is good news and shows Marriott's desire to not treat the Starwood team as second class

Yeah, it's buried somewhere deep in the bowels of the Insiders thread, (although good luck trying to find it using the infamous Insiders' search function - almost as bad as the Starwood flex dates function ). I'm glad you re-posted it though, because it takes on a different meaning after this week's naming of the head of the program.

Here's my concern; after watching an hour of the SPG marketing video in the W last week, it is clear that Ol' Bri of TPG is truly an SPG kinda traveler (bordering on being a travel snob, by contrast take jerrycoin, that's how you travel with class). Brian was peeing in his pants over the St. Regis (he calls it Park City, I call it Deer Valley, tomato, tomahto) and in this interview he asks about the ability to use points at Bulgari... oh, for pete's sake.

I've had about all I can take reading about the "super luxe" SPG traveler. Now it would be great if the majority of them were like our new pal normanp, but the vibe I'm getting from their FlyerTalk posts is that they truly think they're something special. Hopefully Marriott in pursuit of the SPGers, don't take us Marriott loyalists for granted and hose us.

As the biggest advocate of Hall of Fame boxing referee Mills Lane's axiom, "protect yourself at all times", it's only my hope, not a demand - it will be, what it will be and we'll have to make personal travel decisions accordingly.

Let's review post-merger changes so far and who has benefited more for each item;

Wheareas I do appreciate Marriott 'upping their game' (like they did with the virtually instantaneous Status Match) and us getting the residual benefits of 'enhanced' programs, here's hoping that before Marriott goes all fancy pants drooling over their Starwood customer, we get our decade long request for guaranteed suites for points and some basic benefits for us lowly proletarian Marriott loyalists.

Mills of course, also was famous for starting every fight with, "Let's get it on"; but sweetheart of a guy that I am, I didn't want to appear too combative - besides, it might anger the Marriott loyalty travel gods and my platinum breakfast would be a cold, day old bagel courtesy ofFresh Bites .

That's a terrific idea. But it takes months of prep and publicity and is a younger person's (<50 years old) game to arrange. I nominate you, as the perfect coordinator. Get out of bed and drive up the road to Disney, meet with brightlybob